The Beginning
by MissTakatori
Summary: Alice goes to a rather twisted Wonderland, different than what she remembers it to have been.


Disclaimer: Don't own American McGee's ALICE in any way.

A/N: I wrote this years ago and decided to post it...This is from way back when I first discovered the game and fell in love with it. Hope you like it!

THE BEGINNING

When Alice had been seven years old, she had visited Wonderland as a little girl. She had seen the twisted but gleeful madness there and met new friends such as the White Rabbit and the Cheshire Cat. Alice was now eight, and she and her family were quietly asleep one night, all in their rooms and all was quiet except for the gongs of the grandfather clock every hour.

Dinah, Alice's pet cat, was lurking around in the shadows. The fire in the fireplace had recently went out, for the coals were still glowing with heat. On Alice's night stand, where Dinah leapt up, there had been an oil lamp that Alice had used for reading. Dinah knocked the lamp off and the oil spilled onto the floor. Unfortunately, the oil made its way right into the coals of the fire place, and instantly a fire erupted.

Alice woke to the screams of her parents, who were trapped in their room as the inferno raged onward. Alice leapt out of her bed.

"Mum? Father?"Alice cried through the smoke.

"Get out, Alice!" She heard her mother's muffled but desperate reply.

"Save yourself, Alice, get out of the house!" Alice's father cried back to her.

Alice ran back into her room, grabbing her stuffed rabbit and opened her window, carefully climbing onto the sill, when there was a small explosion, throwing Alice from her window and down onto the snow-covered ground. Glass, more snow, and other remnants of the house rained down on her as she heard her mother scream her name.

Alice slowly lifted her head, dazed. She dared not look at her house, which by now was completely consumed by the raging flames. She spotted her toy that she'd had it seemed forever, the one she escaped with. Her familiar stuffed rabbit, only now it was missing one of its button eyes. It had landed in the snow also, not very far from Alice, a thin coating of new snow already settling on it. This was all Alice could take in before she lost consciousness.

Now, ten years later, an eighteen-year-old Alice was in an asylum after going mad after the tragic loss of her parents. At the moment, Alice sat in her bed under the gray, dried blood-speckled sheets, her back propped up by the worn gray pillow she had slept on since her arrival at Rutledge's Asylum. Alice's emerald green eyes were staring out the window as a thunderstorm raged outside. Rain beat harshly against the window and lightning flashed, illuminating the room for a second, then the thunder would rumble, Alice feeling the harsh vibration as her fingers touched the glass gently.

The girl sighed, turning away from the window and looked around her room, if it was at all that. It was more of a cell, and since she was in an asylum after all, a cell would be an appropriate name for it as she was one of its inmates. She glanced at the table beside her, looking at the spoon that had tried to force it's way into her mouth; and the bottle that held the medicine that would supposedly help her. They had left it there for her, and she wasn't going to even look at it again. What, did they actually expect her to suddenly change and give herself a spoonful? Only in their wildest dreams.

Alice's eyes wandered around the room farther, the lightning flashing once again and the rumbling came soon after it. Alice looked at the walls that caged her in this prison of an asylum and wondered exactly how they got their tan-eggshell color. She knew what the stains on the walls were from already; her of course. The yellow-green stain of the food they tried to feed her that she had refused to consume, tea she had thrown at the wall, the brown-red color of her own dried blood... She had caused these stains. Her eyes wandered off to the barred windows, which through the glass she could see the rain pouring down from the dark gray clouds that rumbled and flashed with their anger.

Alice glanced at the door as she heard footsteps echoing down the hall.

_Ah, paying me a visit are you?_ She thought. Alice settled down onto the bed and looked blankly at the ceiling, lighting flashing again.

The latch to her door slowly unlocked and the nurse stepped in carefully, looking at Alice.

"Poor girl... maybe this old rabbit will bring her around..." Said the nurse quietly, stepping over and setting Alice's old stuffed rabbit beside her and left quickly, locking the door again behind her.

Alice looked at the rabbit. Her eyes widened as she realized it was her old childhood toy; the one she had escaped from the fire with. A button eye had been sewed on to replace the one it had lost that tragic night, and she wrapped her arm around it.

"Save us, Alice!" Said the rabbit doll suddenly. Alice looked down at it in surprise, her mouth agape.

Before Alice knew it, she was falling in a stream of bright blue light, falling until she hit the ground. A mound covered in moss and mushrooms, she realized. Her eyes drifted forward and Alice noted that it appeared she was in some sort of place where people had been mining.

"Please don't dawdle, Alice, we're very late indeed!"A voice came. Alice looked up to see the White Rabbit. Only now, he was more changed than ever.

He looked like just skin and bones, with two large eyes. The Rabbit only wore a velvet overcoat, a worn top hat, and a pair of leather gloves. His pocket watch was with him as always, tucked away in his breast pocket, the chain exposed slightly.

Abruptly, the Rabbit turned away from Alice, running down away from her and turning the corner where she realized the shaft went onward.

A smile suddenly appeared, and then a body... the Cheshire Cat slowly walked toward her.

The Cat had changed much, too. He _was_ skin and bones, with a sickening yellow-green toothed grin. Tatoos had been placed all over his body, and in one of his ears there was a golden hoop earring, which looked like it had started to rip through the skin.

"You look quite mangy, Cat, but your grin's a comfort." Alice said, getting off the mound she had landed on.

She dusted off her faded blue dress and now yellowish apron, the apron having been already stained with specks from her own blood when she had shed it. Her black boots were laced to the top.

Alice looked at the cat, folding her arms behind her back, waiting for a reply.

"And you've picked up a bit of an attitude, but still curious and willing to learn, I hope." The Cheshire Cat replied.

"Wonderland's become quite strange, how is one to find her way?" Alice asked.

"As knowing where you're going is preferable to being lost, ask. Rabbit knows a thing two and I myself don't need a weathervane to tell which way the wind blows." The Cat grinned a sickening smile, then vanished.

Alice took her first steps in the new twisted Wonderland, and began her journey. Little did she know... this was only the beginning.


End file.
